Mexico drops 4 positions in the UNCTAD technology index

Mexico dropped four places in the Frontier Technology Readiness Indexfrom position 57 in 2020 (the immediate previous publication) to 61 in 2022.

However, Mexico rose in the general rating of this index, from 0.54 to 0.58 points, reported the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in a report released this Thursday.

The index shows that very few developing countries have the necessary capacities to take advantage of these technologies, which include blockchain, drones, gene modification, nanotechnology and solar energy.

The United States ranked first in this ranking, followed by Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

According to UNCTAD, green frontier technologies such as electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and green hydrogen are expected to reach a market value of $2.1 trillion by 2030, four times their current value.

At the same time, sales in the market of electric vehicles they could be multiplied by five to reach 824,000 million dollars by 2030, from the current value of 163,000 million dollars.

The Index ranks 166 countries (eight more than in the 2020 version) according to indicators of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Skills, Research and Development, Industrial Capacity and Finance.

Although developing countries are the least prepared to use cutting-edge technologies, several Asian economies have made major policy changes that have enabled them to perform better than expected based on their GDP per capita.

India continues to show the best performance, ranking 67 better than expected, followed by the Philippines (54 better) and Vietnam (44 better).

The Index shows that countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are the least prepared to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies and risk losing the technological opportunities current.

Comparing the 2020 ranking with that of 2022, Mexico lowered its position in ICT (from 68 to 70) and Research and Development (from 29 to 45), while it improved in Skills (from 83 to 73) and Industry ( from 33 to 31) and remained in Finance (96).

UNCTAD selected these five building blocks to measure the ability to use, adopt and adapt cutting-edge technologies.

As a methodology, the deployment of ICT (Internet users and average download speed), Skills (expected years of schooling and highly qualified employment), R&D (number of scientific publications on cutting-edge technologies and number of registered patents) are considered. on cutting-edge technologies), Industrial activity (exports of high-tech manufacturing and exports of digital services) and Access to financing (domestic credit to the private sector).